In a computer system, user programs called applications are executed by a digital processor. The digital processor may be for example a mainframe, a host processor of a network, a stand-alone PC and the like. The applications may be for example spreadsheet programs and word processing programs, to name a few. Execution of the different applications generates files of different file formats. That is, a word processing application generates files of a text storage format while a spreadsheet application generates files of another format, and among different word processing applications different text storage formats are employed for the generated files.
In order for one application (a requesting application) to access files of foreign file formats, either (a) the requesting application must know the file format of the desired files, or (b) the requesting application must use an interface which accesses the desired files according to the foreign file format thereof. As a result, the proper interface must be available to a requesting application which means that a variety of interfaces must be available for a requesting application to access files of a variety of foreign file formats.
One solution to availability of various interfaces has been to include individual open, close, read, and write access routines for each of specific file formats in an interface. For different file formats outside of those specified for an interface, the appropriate open, close, read, and write routines are developed and added to the interface upon user/customer request. This requires development time to make the necessary changes to the interface for the additional/new file formats. In turn, the longer development time is, the longer is the turn-around time which leads to customer dissatisfaction.
Thus, there exists a need for improvements in interfacing among different file formats.